Chris Collins didn't know his dad had slipped into the gymnasium and was standing behind the bleachers, that big, familiar smile shielded from view as the Duke University basketball player gave advice to the kids at his former junior high.
He spoke of the importance of hard work, passion, perseverance and high character.
"You always wonder if your kids are listening," said Doug Collins, now coach of the Philadelphia 76ers, "and I almost got tears in my eyes. So much of what he was saying – he absorbed so many of the things that I had been speaking about through my entire lifetime while I was running my basketball camps."
It wasn't until years later when Chris, after dealing with the disappointment of a lifetime and becoming a coach and father himself, came to appreciate his dad's most profound lesson.
Family is the ultimate team, selflessness the most important key to success.